Farmers in the Middle West would to-day have their Poland Chinas or Durocs of the same age weighing two hundred fifty to three hundred pounds.

Still the smallness of Washington's animals does not necessarily indicate such bad management as may at first glance appear.

Until of considerable size the pigs practically made their own living, eating roots and mast in the woods, and they did not require much grain except during fattening time.

And, after all, as the story has it, "what's time to a hawg ?" In his later years he seems to have taken more interest in his pigs.

By 1786 he had decided that when fattening they ought to be put into closed pens with a plank floor, a roof, running water and good troughs.
A visitor to Mount Vernon in 1798 says that he had "about 150 of the Guinea kind, with short legs and hollow back," so it is evident that he was experimenting with new breeds.